In Paris at the Opéra Bastille from November 26th, 2018, through January 2nd, 2019.Music by Sergei ProkofievChoreography by Rudolf Nureyev

Sergei Prokofiev composed Cinderella during the Second World War for Galina Ulanova, then at Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet. The musical score manages to bring out all the sweet, ironic, and even quite violent aspects of the classic fairy tale as originally transcribed by Charles Perrault in his 1697 masterpiece The Mother Goose Tales.
In 1986, the Paris Opera Ballet’s then director, Rudolf Nureyev, decided to create a vehicle for the company’s youngest and so talented ballerina, Sylvie Guillem. Inspired by their mutual adoration of classic Hollywood movies, the result is Cinderella with a twist. Updated from “long ago and far away,” the ballet pays homage to the era of silents and early Silver Screen musicals: the world of Charlie Chaplin and Fred Astaire.

ACT ONE (45 minutes)

Cinderella’s Stepmother and the two evil and untalented stepsisters argue, sew away furiously, and argue again as the poor girl looks on. When she finds herself alone for a moment, Cinderella allows herself to dream of stardom…or at least that her father stop drinking. Out of the blue, a mysterious stranger — who seems to have crashed some kind of vehicle outside — plops down in their living room. Cinderella is the only one who tries to help him.
Amazingly, the stepsisters have finally won bit parts in a Busby Berkeley-ish musical: costumes are delivered and the Choreographer shows up to try to put the girls through their paces. Once all are off to the studio, Cinderella stops scrubbing the floor and plays at being the many stars she’s seen at the cinema. To her astonishment, the stranger returns and reveals that he is in fact a famous Hollywood Producer. Sweeping her up into his cape like a fairy godfather, he whisks her off to his studio.

Scene two: at a Hollywood studio

Because Cinderella must chose a gown for her screen debut, a bevy of dancers swirl about in a display of couture outfits designed for spring, summer, fall, and winter by the now legendary Japanese designer Hanae Mori. As Cinderella and the Producer look on, this interlude develops into a full-scale number in the spirit of the RKO musicals. Irrepressible, the Producer butts in to the proceedings with a Groucho Marx impersonation. (Note: Nureyev created this role for himself). But before she can ride off into the sunset, the producer warns Cinderella about Midnight (twelve dancers in awful costumes who lurch around like Frankenstein’s monster). Once the clock strikes twelve, she will lose not only her gown and carriage. The tick-tocking dancers insist upon a much more bitter message through their movement: if our heroine does not take charge and use her youth, beauty, and talent to their fullest during the next few hours, she would be better off dead.

INTERMISSION (20 minutes)

ACT TWO (45 minutes)

Scene one: On the sound stages

As the unit director and his assistant quarrel, three silent films are being frantically made to better or worse effect.

Scene two: The Main Soundstage

The Movie Star (Prince Charming), carefully packaged in gold lamé, makes his grand entrance. But when rehearsals begin, he is appalled to find himself repeatedly pawed at by three deeply weird women: Cinderella’s stepsisters and that Stepmother. Nevertheless, the discouraged choreographer insists that rehearsals must begin. Then, under the Producer’s watchful eye, Cinderella makes an even grander entrance in slo-mo and proves, in her screen test, to be Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, and Cyd Charisse all rolled into one.
During a break, a bevy of wannabe actresses “only waitressing for the moment” – and decked out in “sexy French maid” costumes — slink around and serve up oranges [musical joke: we hear the a reprise of the famous march from Prokofiev’s 1919 opera, “A Love for Three Oranges.”] The two sisters fiddle around with their fruit, hoping to redirect the star’s attention. But The Movie Star only has eyes for Cinderella, and nothing would mar the adorable couple’s happiness, were it not for the tick-tock of the chimes of midnight…

INTERMISSION (20 minutes)

ACT THREE (40 minutes)

Scene one: Los Angeles

The Movie Star, desperate to find his Cinderella, enlists all the male cast and crew in a search party. Like cowboys, the boys gallop off and try to find the girl who fits the shoe. They end up checking out the women at a series of Hollywood cliché locales: a) a tango/fandango/flamenco palace [Ugly Sister #1] b) a Chinese opium den [Ugly Sister #2] c) a Russian cabaret [the very perked-up Stepmother]. But their efforts are to no avail.

Scene two: back at the house

Cinderella, miserable, afraid of stardom yet so wearied of her present life, wonders if the last day had not been just a dream. But her living nightmare ends when the Movie Star arrives. Of course the shoe fits. But before she can dance off with her prince, she must sign the studio contract that the Producer waves before her eyes. Perhaps servitude to a studio is better than servitude to a stepfamily? In the end, all that really matters is that a prince charming loves you and dances divinely. Right?

Commentaires fermés sur A plot summary for Cendrillon (a.k.a. The ballet about Cinderella)

What we now consider the greatest ballet of the Romantic era, Giselle, premiered at the Paris Opera on June 28, 1841. Still deemed to provide one of the richest dramatic challenges for both a ballerina and her partner, this ballet encapsulates all the themes characteristic of Romantic theater and Gothic literature: inevitably tragic love stories, noblemen in disguise, innocent and betrayed heroines, a mad scene, vibrant local color giving way to moonlit forest glades, all of this topped by a heavy dose of the supernatural. Listen to the music with your eyes. Adolphe Adam’s score, resplendent with topical leitmotifs, sprucely antedates Wagner’s “discovery” of the form.

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ACT I [50 minutes]

Martha Murawiewa. Paris,1863

Giselle is the loveliest girl in a fairy-tale-like village lost somewhere in the Rhineland of the Romantic imagination. She will have two passions: her love for the dance and her love for Loys, a mysterious but handsome newcomer to the village. She will have two problems: her mother (who fears her daughter will wear out her heart by dancing too much and become a Wili, a restless dancing ghost) and Hilarion (a lowly games-keeper, Giselle’s self-anointed and very jealous self-anointed fiancé).
As this is a melodrama, when the curtain rises we must first encounter the anti-hero as he sets the plot in motion: Hilarion, toting either a bouquet or a brace of coneys (depends on the production), places his offering longingly at the entrance to the hut where Giselle and her mother live. But you can sense something is wrong. He’d make an okay son-in-law, but is he sexy? (Depends on the production, but usually the role is interpreted as a thankless and self-defeating exercise).

But the next guy — swooping down into Giselle’s bucolic valley replete with cape, sword, and shadowed by an intrusive but shrewd valet (called Wilfried in the program)– is indeed sexy and most confident of his charms. This elegant mystery man calling himself “Loys” sees no reason to deposit mere offerings before the girl’s door and then back away. He jauntily knocks on the door in triple rhythm, as Adolphe Adam’s music does its lovely variation on “Hickory Dickory Dock.”
As if just awakened, our beautiful heroine bursts out of her house, all abounce. By nature, she walks on air.

Pavlova. London, 1925

Her attraction to the elegant stranger who calls himself “Loys” is a no-brainer. But her modesty forms a kind of wall around her that this newcomer yearns to breach. Giselle, not by nature untrusting, nevertheless relies on a daisy to tell her if her new suitor’s aims are true. “He loves me, he loves me not.” Here is one case where French trumps English: the music in 3/4 time includes a winding and regretful phrase which ends in a question just where a French woman of the 19th century would touch the last petal. This superstitious gesture involves a soft chant of more than just two options: 1) he loves me 2) a little 3) a lot 4) passionately 5) unto madness 6) …not at all. “Unto madness” will perversely prove to define these characters’ lives.
Alas – even if her self-assured suitor tries to increase the odds by cheating – the flower proves prophetic at this moment: he loves her maybe a little but really not at all. The music’s “daisy theme” will haunt them both, from its fractured return during the mad scene to its odd reappearance (as led astray by a cello) for their duet in Act II…

Hilarion returns and bothers the couple. Village life goes on.

The usual harvest festival becomes especially exciting once an aristocratic hunting party arrives. The villagers decide to entertain them with dances. Giselle, prevented by her fretful mother from dancing, presents two of her friends who outdo each other in a technically demanding duet. One of the grand ladies, Bathilde, takes such a particular liking to Giselle that she asks her father, the Duke of Courland, if she might offer her own necklace to the young girl.

Enjoyed by such a gift, Giselle’s happiness grows when she is anointed « Harvest Queen. » Her mother cannot stop her from dancing with and for her friends.

Alas, meanwhile, the suspicious Hilarion actively seeks proof that Loys is not the regular guy he claims to be. He finds it in Loys’s hut: a sword, which by law and custom is forbidden to simple folk.
In fact, Loys is really Albrecht, a nobleman in disguise and who has been long affianced to Bathilde. Unmasked by Hilarion in front of everybody, Albrecht tries to make light of the situation. Giselle, realizing that she is about to lose the only man she has ever loved, begins to lose her mind. Desperately fighting against the darkness that fills her heart – and whether she has a heart attack or stabs herself with Albrecht’s sword depends on the production and the ballerina – she races about, haunted by old melodies, especially that of the “daisies.” Her invisible flowers now clearly shout his “not at all.” Desperate for any love that is true, real and selfless, she hurls herself into her mother’s arms. And drops dead.

Bolshoï. US tour 1959

Intermission

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ACT II [50 minutes]

The moonlit second act takes place in a forest glade located somewhere between the village cemetery and a lake. We are in the realm of the Wilis, a ghostly tribe of beautiful young women who had died in despair just before their wedding day. Jilted by their fiancés, these girls are forever condemned to rise out of their graves each night under the spell of their queen, Myrtha.

Paris Opera Ballet 1990’s

Myrtha dances three solos in a row upon her entrance, all of them exercises in control and release…woe betide the one without bounce, a steely softness, and natural gravitas. Thus the wilis embark each night to exact ritual revenge on all men – all of them, not only those who cheat and lie — by luring one a time into their midst and then forcing each to dance until, exhausted, he dies.
The woebegone Hilarion, bringing flowers to Giselle’s grave, becomes their first victim. But Giselle, summoned from her tomb to be initiated as a Wili, does all in her power to save their next target: Albrecht. He has finally understood that the daisy lied to them both: he loves her, passionately.

Platel, Belarbi, Arbo. Paris Opera Ballet 1990’s

Her pleas that Myrtha let him go fall on deaf ears. So Giselle tries to lull Albrecht and protect him by moving only gently and slowly, yet they both get carried away be her now truly fatal passion for dancing. To everyone’s surprise, Albrecht is still breathing when the sound of bells signaling dawn shatters the power of the Wilis. Giselle’s superhuman ability to love and to forgive has broken the spell. She may/must now return to her grave to rest in eternal peace. If Albrecht does not die, he realizes that this means he is condemned to something worse: life.
He will remain alone with his memories. Unto madness, perhaps. We will never know how his story ends.

Bessmertnova-Tikhonov 1970’s

Fracci-Bortoluzzi 1970’s

At the Palais Garnier in Paris from May 28th through June 5th, 2016.

Choreography by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot. Music by Adolphe Adam.
Story by Théophile Gautier and Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, after Heinrich Heine, 1841.

A ballet in two acts by José Martinez.. Music by Marc-Olivier Dupin. Inspired by Marcel Carné’s 1945 film with its scenario by Jacques Prévert.

While you may regret that your seats are in the nosebleed section, in France they call the amphitheater – where the true fans congregate – “paradise.” This ballet, based on a beloved French film, revolves around theater and those who create it: impassioned people who live for the adoration of an audience, even when they only find one in a second-rate venue.
Actors, and their marginal world, also live in our imagination as emblematic of liberty: free spirits who reject bourgeois conventions and authoritarian strictures. The nostalgic melancholy of the black and white original, filmed under strenuous circumstances during World War II and released at the Liberation, responded perfectly to the public mood.
The story takes place in pre-Haussmannian Paris, the cluttered and vibrant city about to be lost forever, as caught between the photographs of Daguerre and Marville. For nearly a century the Boulevard du Temple had housed a jumble of hugely popular theaters devoted to offering the cheap thrills of vaudeville, pantomime, and melodrama. Indeed, because of all the violent action onstage, Parisians had nicknamed the street Le Boulevard du crime. But this world was destined to disappear in 1862, during the Second Empire. By targeting these buildings for demolition in the name of progress, Haussmann was attacking the very essence of « le peuple » and « le populaire. » This tale brings us back to a shabby paradise now truly lost forever.
Many of the characters are based on real people: Baptiste Deburau, still remembered as the greatest mime of the 19th century; the larcenous Lacenaire, guillotined in 1836. And there really was an actor named Frédérick Lemaître. The character he invented — the amoral but attractive bandit Robert Macaire – is the exact contemporary of Balzac’s Vautrin.

(Please note: the following summary is based on my notes from the ballet’s creation in 2008. Since then Mr. Martinez has made cuts and changes).

This 1838 photo of the Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre required ten minutes of exposure time. As in the ballet, people came and went and could not be captured by the lens. The bootblack and his client stayed still, and thus became the only actors in this image.

ACT I [1hour 15 minutes]Prologue: where an aged Jean-Louis Barrault, the actor who created Baptiste in the film, returns to the abandoned soundstage and begins to remember…Scene 1: The Boulevard du Temple Crowds jostle in front of the theaters as actors, acrobats, jugglers, and carnies try to tempt them inside. Lacenaire, an amoral dandy, public scrivener by day and assassin by night, cases the crowd. Frédérick Lemaître, an aspiring actor, tries to put the moves on Garance, a beautiful sometime actress. She is not interested. The ragman Jericho [also a snitch and a fence], shows Lemaître a jewel he thinks Garance might fall for…
A crowd gathers in front of the Théâtre des funambules, which specializes in mime. As the actors enchant the crowd with a preview, Lacernaire picks pockets and melts away. Garance happens to be standing next to one of the victims and is grabbed by the police.Baptiste, the mime, saw everything from the stage and re-enacts what actually happened. Garance is freed.Scene 2: The Théâtre des FunambulesNathalie, a young actress, lingers backstage and dreams of Baptiste. Jericho surprises her with a wedding dress. When Baptiste arrives, he has no patience for Jericho and shoos him away. While Nathalie at first thinks that the red flower Baptiste holds is for her, she soon realizes that he is dreaming of another.
The show goes on…badly. The actor playing the lion flounces out after getting accidentally conked on the head. Frédérick sees his chance. He dons the lion costume and improvises masterfully to the delight of the audience. Baptiste hires him on the spot, and the two men go out to celebrate.Scene 3: “Le Rouge-Gorge” dance hall Frédérick quickly gets drunk and tries to pick up girls while the melancholy Baptiste looks on. When Garance enters on the arm of Lacenaire, of all people, Baptiste tries to ask her to dance. Lacernaire’s henchman attacks him, but Baptiste defends himself skillfully and leaves with Garance. Lacernaire’s hoods, on a lead from Jericho, head out to beat him up. But they mistake an innocent passer-by for Baptiste…Scene 4: Madame Hermine’s boarding house Garance offers herself to Baptiste. Her easy ways startle him. He wants true love, not just sex. She wants love, but to be free too. He just cannot bring himself to embrace her, and flees.
In the adjoining room, Frédérick happily fools around with Madame Hermine. But when he sees Baptiste leave – which means Garance is all alone in her bed – Frédérick cannot resist the opportunity lying in front of him, to Madame Hermine’s frustration.Scene 5: On stage in the pantomime show “Lovers of the Moon” Garance has been hired to play a statue. All she has to do is stand there and incarnate the beautiful goddess of the moon. Baptiste, as Pierrot [a clown], tries in vain to woo
her, then falls asleep at her feet. Frédérick, as Harlequin, has better luck. Baptiste/Pierrot then decides to kill himself, but people keep interrupting him (including Nathalie, who plays a washerwoman).
Baptiste espies Frédérick and Garance kissing in the wings and freezes up. Nathalie sees everything and gets upset too. The poor girl cannot understand why Baptiste won’t just settle for the quiet and gentle love she could offer him.Scene 6: Garance’s dressing room Garance shrugs when Frédérick proves jealous of Baptiste and tells him to leave. Then the Count de Montray, who had ogled her from the audience, appears in the wake of an enormous bouquet of flowers. Garance is unmoved and tells him she is not for sale. He leaves the flowers…and his card.
Baptiste then enters her dressing room and scatters the flowers in his own fit of jealousy. When Garance begins to try to explain her deep feelings for him, Nathalie intervenes and drags him away.
Enter Madame Hermine trailed by policemen who want to arrest Garance again. The sight of the count’s card – implying protection from high up – stops them. Garance realizes that she has only two options: losing her independence now by becoming the Count’s mistress, or losing her freedom permanently by being jailed.

Intermission [25 minutes] Make sure you not only visit the Grand foyer…but glance back at the Grand escalier where you might espy a scene from Othello.

ACT II [55 minutes] Six years later: Baptiste has married Nathalie and they have a child. Garance is living with the Count. Frédérick has become a celebrated actor, renowned for his interpretation of Othello. Scene 1:At the Grand Théâtre: the première of the melodrama « Robert Macaire » A gaggle of ballerinas provide the backdrop for Frédérick’s newest role: the cynical and insolent master of crime, Robert Macaire. [For logical reasons, as this is a ballet rather than a talkie, Frédérick the actor becomes Frédérick the danseur étoile]. It’s a hit.
Scene 2: At the mansion of le comte de Montray Garance, the struggling actress, has been transformed into a sophisticated kept woman. As she prepares her toilette, the count demonstrates his pride in having captured her. But she seems indifferent to the luxury he showers upon her. She’d avoided prison, but ended up living in a gilded cage. To Montray’s surprise, she refuses to let him accompany her to the theater. Guess which theater.Scene 3: On stage in the new pantomime “Ragman” The sad character of Pierrot (Baptiste) follows a beautiful stranger to a ball but is denied entry because of his attire. Desperate and penniless, he tries to convince a ragman to lend him some clothes. When the ragman refuses, Pierrot kills him.
Suddenly, Baptiste espies Garance in the audience and freezes up again. Startled, Garance leaves, and Baptiste realizes how deeply he is still in love with her after so many years. He rushes out to find her.Scene 4: A ball chez monsieur le comte The Count graciously welcomes Lacernaire to the party, but is appalled that Jericho the ragman has tagged along. He orders his lackeys to throw out the intruder. Then Baptiste bursts in and the Count quickly comprehends that the mime wants Garance, and that she wants him.
The moment they are left alone together, Baptiste and Garance fall into each other’s arms. But Lacernaire has seen them, and decides to teach the count a lesson: « you throw out my friend? Then I’ll make sure everyone knows your girlfriend cuckolds you. »
Baptiste and Garance flee. The count is furious and takes it out on Lacernaire, who vows revenge.Scene 5: Madame Hermine’s boarding house/The Count’s mansion Garance and Baptiste finally give in to their mutual passion. At the same moment, Lacernaire breaks into the mansion and murders the lovelorn Montray.
The feral Jericho leads Nathalie and her child to the boarding house. When she realizes what has happened, Nathalie despairs.
Garance, a free and generous spirit, never meant to hurt anyone. Pained by Nathalie’s anguish, Garance must make another choice. She decides it is time to leave.Scene 6: Mardi Gras Baptiste runs after Garance, desperate to reach her. But, as in the iconic finale of the film, the crowd separates them. Martinez’s inspired and poetic translation from screen to stage of how Garance slowly disappears from view will take your breath away.Epilogue: Jean-Louis Barrault, having relived his greatest role, is now freed from his phantoms and he, too, may leave the soundstage forever behind.

Like other 18th century French classics such as Les Noces de Figaro and Les Liaisons dangereuses, this tale highlights issues of gender and class during the ancien régime.
God, that sounds boring. To restate: this ballet about all kinds of social and sexual relationships will be danced out by extraordinarily limber people wearing really spiffy period costumes. And that’s never boring at all…
L’Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel continues to perplex readers. Is his rags-to riches-to rags heroine immoral or amoral? A vicious man-eater who merely pretends to be innocent or a clueless innocent corrupted by men and drawn into vice? Or does the pro-active Manon now represent the anti-Cinderella outlook for many enlightened girls?

If there is such a thing as “woman’s nature,” men — from randy politicians to religious zealots — continue trying to figure that one out.
You might know of the more famous adaptations of this tale into operas by Jules Massenet [1885] and Giacomo Puccini [1894]. Sir Kenneth MacMillan certainly did in 1974. In love with the story, working on a deadline for England’s Royal Ballet, he felt hamstrung by two gorgeous scores. How could he avoid making dancers mime to well-known arias? Here’s how: use music by Massenet…lots of juicy bits of it, but not one note from the opera!

ACT ONE (43 minutes)– Scene one: at a stagecoach inn near Paris
The first person we see under the spotlight is Manon’s corrupt and venal brother, Lescaut. Equally at ease with riff-raff and raunchy aristocrats, he first tries to pass off his mistress to the rich Monsieur G.M. and then guffaws when his beggar friends make off with the pompous ass’s watch.
Into this decadent scene stumbles a shy and handsome student, so lost in reading a book he’s utterly oblivious to all the commotion. His name is Des Grieux.
The stagecoach finally arrives, with Manon in it. While still trying to fend off the old guy who was trying to pick her up during the voyage, she’s faced with her brother immediately trying to set her up with the lecherous monsieur G.M. No wonder her parents are sending her to a convent, men just can’t keep their hands off of her. Her fault?
To very delicate music, Manon tries to hold on to her liberty, her freedom to at least choose only one of these disgusting men whom her brother encourages. Lescaut’s mistress flashes lengths of perfect thigh. She wouldn’t mind being propositioned by any of the leftovers.
Then Manon’s eyes meet those of Des Grieux, the first and only man she will ever desire. After all those miming and stumbling old farts, here’s a man who really knows how to dance!
At the end of this scene, we are treated to the first of all the glorious pas de deux [duet]’s that all dance lovers associate with MacMillan: how can two bodies be taken to the limit of push-me-pull-you? The point of each of their duets in this ballet will be about how far you can go without breaking your ankle/wrist or fall down head-first while transmitting pure emotion. And each duet will end with the exquisite ways MacMillan will invent for the lovers to float back down off their high: literally ending up sweeping the floor — oh so deliciously — with their bodies.
The old guy returns only to discover that Manon has eloped with his purse and his carriage. Monsieur G.M. offers Lescaut even more money to find and bring him this tantalizingly frisky creature.

– Scene two: in Des Grieux’s humble garret [at least it’s in Paris, not at some awful old dull country mansion].Des Grieux tries to write a letter to his father along the lines of “listen, this is a great girl, please send more money.” He’s from a good family, but doesn’t control his fortune yet.

When he finally tears himself away in order to go mail the thing, Lescaut sneaks in with Monsieur G.M., who tantalizes her with all kinds of promises and jewels and even a fur-lined cape. What girl could resist? O.K., the guy seems to have some kind of foot fetish, but ballerinas have been all vaccinated against that old cliché since, like, forever.
Lescaut stays behind in order to rein in the understandable anguish of a horrified Des Grieux. And to try tempt him to listen to reason. “Why not let her suck that bloodsucker dry? We could all be rich!”

INTERMISSION (20 minutes)

ACT TWO (46 minutes)– Scene one: an elegant evening chez a most shady lady
We saw her in the first scene, grandly sweeping along with Monsieur G.M. That was no lady.. .and not his wife either. “Madame” is actually what is known as a “Madam.” Those girls we saw with fans in the first scene were not ladies, but prostitutes.
Swords should be left at the door, but other metaphors may enter.
A very drunk Lescaut arrives, dragging along the reluctant and droopy Des Grieux. Lescaut’s ever-optimistic mistress gets caught – sideways – in the fun.
Manon enters, stunningly outfitted, and is carried aloft à la Marilyn Monroe by besotted customers to the creepy Monsieur G.M.’s proud delight.
Manon’s thoughtless vanity cannot at first be worn down by Des Grieux’s lovelorn glances. When he finally gets her alone, she makes it clear that she loves him, but not his poverty.
Manon tells him what to do: fleece G.M. by cheating at cards…Des Grieux may be cute, but he botches the job. Real swords are drawn. Taking advantage of the confusion, the lovers elope again.– Scene two: back at the garret
The lovers dance all over the bedroom as usual.
At one point, Manon realizes that she “forgot” to leave her jewelry behind…
Bad idea. G.M. knows where to find the love-nest and bursts in with a police escort, dragging along a bound and bleeding Lescaut. He threatens to have Manon arrested for theft and prositution. For the first time in her life, she must face the ugliness of the vengeful cruelty of which some men prove most inclined.

INTERMISSION (20 minutes)

ACT THREE (25 minutes)– Scene one: arrival in New Orleans
A shipload of unfortunate prostitutes have been deported to the New World. Des Grieux’s love knows no bounds: he got himself on the ship by pretending to be Manon’s husband and even seems oddly happy despite the circumstances.
Even broken in spirit and with a shorn head alas alas Manon, despite herself, still attracts unwonted attention.– Scene two: the jailor’s office
This one is gross. The jailor will give her privileges if she…and he forces her to do so. Des Grieux acts out the audience’s shock and kills this gloating perv.– Scene three: lost in the bayou
On the run with nowhere to go, the couple clings to hope in different ways. Haunted by her memories, Manon –not made for this kind of life — dies of swamp fever and exhaustion in the desperate Des Grieux’s arms, completely burned out by the force of other men’s great expectations.

The choreographer Jerome Robbins, who died in 1998, considered the Paris Opera Ballet his second (third?) home. He adored coming here to personally coach our dancers. Only the New York City Ballet, his home base, has more of his ballets in its active repertory.

Creator of over 60 ballets and co-director – with George Balanchine – of the New York City Ballet, Robbins lived a triple life: commuting between Lincoln Center and Broadway and Hollywood. As the dance-maker, director, or “doctor” of many of the greatest musicals – such as On The Town,Peter Pan, Gypsy, Forum, Fiddler, and most famously, West Side Story — Robbins earned 5 Tony Awards and 2 Oscars.

That his musical, The King and I, is now playing at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet and his ballet “Dances at a Gathering” can be caught at the Palais Garnier, highlights this multilayered legacy. Whether his dancers wore 19th c. imperial Thai headdresses or wispy chiffon and pointe shoes, Robbins always sought ways for movement to seem a natural extension and expression of a deeper narrative. An instinctive storyteller, even his most plot-less ballets betray glimmerings of plot.

Alexei Ratmansky, one year old when Robbins’s Dances premiered, grew up in the Soviet bloc in an atmosphere where the old-fashioned (such as the big 19th century narrative ballets at the Bolshoi) held on by its toenails. During his youth, it had become possible to take peeks at bits of the glamour of the abstract plot-less-one-act and the decadent musicals of far-off America

Abstraction has long been justified by the joke that our vocabulary of leaps and spins does not quite include the words for “this is my mother-in-law.” But nowadays, the story ballet has come back into fashion. Ratmansky’s challenge is to craft steps and combinations that will speak to you without a word being spoken. Especially as the story of Psyche revolves around her…mother-in-law.

NYC, Central Park. A blue sky with shades of green and purple…

DANCES AT A GATHERING (1969)

Choreography by Jerome Robbins

Music by Frederick Chopin

There is an irony to be found in fact that the storyteller Robbins’s ballet masterpiece has no plot. Circumstances, and a bit of stress fatigue, dictated its construction according to dancer lore. Too respectful of the guru Balanchine’s authority – who nevertheless always assured that his co-director had access to rehearsal space at the New York State Theater – Robbins, feeling the urge to take on Chopin, never seemed to have insisted upon a normal rehearsal schedule. Instead he noodled around (to put it mildly: tried, discarded, reinserted, agonized, tortured both steps and bodies) with whatever dancers whenever they had a half an hour to spare. Each half-an-hour was used to carve out perhaps thirty seconds of steps to be reworded later… The structure of “Dances” reflects its episodic – almost anarchic — birth.

Crafted by and for specific American dancers, this ballet in fact carries more than a hint of Slavic soul. Of the seventeen sections, lilting mazurkas – a Polish dance in swift triple time -dominate eight of them. Little gestures such as a click of the heels, one arm akimbo while the other sweeps grandly up and out, a tilt of the head, all bring folk dance to mind. One could find further irony in that while every bit of Chopin’s music tickles your feet and emotions, the dance pieces he inspires remain mysteriously both full and empty of story, including the very first abstract ballet ever, Fokine’s 1907 Chopiniana.

In the end, the story is that there is no story, as life really has none either: “In the room the women come and go, talking about Michelangelo.” Think of this ballet as not merely something to watch, but as snippets of ongoing conversations caught on the sly…just let your eyes follow someone around this picnic on a late summer afternoon on Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park or on the banks of Chopin’s native Vistula. The boy in brown or green or violet; the girl in yellow or blue or mauve…pick one or two or three and amuse yourself by imagining which one you would want as a relative.

By the way, Robbins broke new ground by finally daring to reject the supremacy of never-perfect orchestral accompaniment. He plonked a simple rehearsal piano on the apron of downstage right. Basta! Until his piece – and that same year, Eliot Feld could have claimed to have gotten there first in his haunting Brahms-inspired sextet Intermezzo– ballet always meant puffy music. Balanchine, bless his heart, certainly brought out the best in Stravinsky but – for Christ’s sake – do Gershwin’s songs really need to be pumped up by Hershey Kay?

Maybe. For some odd reason, be it lack of cymbals or symbols, a portion of the audience always nods off during the understated moods in “Dances.” Too soft, not dramatic enough. It’s like the way Mozart snoozes some people out. In either case, I’ve yet to figure out why. Unless…

There is a key moment late in the ballet when The Boy in Brown, watched by the others, kneels and stretches out his hand to softly caress the floor. There lies the story, and the reason why dancers love this ballet more than earthlings: it’s about being home. Regular families get together on Sundays in parks and playgrounds; the family of dancers gathers daily in the studio. Each performance together, then, is their version of Thanksgiving.

The Castle of Chantilly…or Cupid’s enchanted domain?

PSYCHE ( 2011)

Choreography by Alexis Ratmansky

Created for the Paris Opera Ballet

Music by César Franck (1890)

While “Dances” boasts of no plot, no orchestra, no sets, no fancy costumes, and all depends on the subtle flick of a dancer’s wrist…here you have got the whole nine yards. Big loud music with chorus that keeps thundering along from climax to climax. Whoop-de-doo sets, almost psychedelic in impact and certainly unnerving, by Karen Kilimnik. Adeline André’s flower-powered costumes will certainly give you something to talk about after the show. Your discussion may center, however, upon whether the arrangement of steps helped or hindered the narrative.

Here follows a summary of Apuleius’s 2nd century telling of the story of Cupid and Psyche, with hints as to how it is staged tonight:

Once upon a time in ancient Greece, Venus – the goddess of love – grew very angry at a king (we never see him). But was it his fault that the youngest of his three daughters, Psyche, had been blessed with such spectacular beauty that men came from far and wide just to stare at her? Was it her fault that these men forgot all about keeping the fires lit in Venus’s temples? (hint: smoke rising). Compared to Venus (in red), when it comes to vanity or bossing people around, Snow White’s stepmother was a pussycat.

She sends her son, Cupid, to put a stop to this annoying situation (this is about where the ballet starts)While his mission is to use his magic arrows to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest creature on the planet, once Cupid sets eyes on her…guess what happens. The problem, then, is how to get around mom.

Cupid concocts a plan. First, he renders all men indifferent to Psyche’s looks. Time passes and everybody – including her sisters – gets married. The king, confused, seeks advice from Apollo and leaves horrified by the god’s instructions — which of course had been planted by Cupid. The king must leave Psyche, dressed in mourning (black chiffon), on a mountaintop where she will be united to – or perhaps devoured by — a monster.

Obedient, fearful, bathed in tears, Psyche falls asleep while awaiting her fate. But instead of a monster, four Zephyrs – the gentlest of winds, dressed in ripped shower-curtains – appear and waft her (now in sparkly pastel chiffon) away to a magical flower-filled meadow alongside a stream. In the distance she can see a palace fit for a god, covered in gold and silver. Soft and disembodied voices tell her to fear not and to await the arrival of her new mate at nightfall. That would be Cupid.

In the dark, she cannot see her lover – and has been warned that she must never look upon him (blindfold) – but realizes that this cannot be a monster (during a pas-de-deux cleverly devised so that the dancers never look at each other, a real challenge as eye-contact provides a huge help in partnering). And so the blissful days and nights pass, until Venus finally figures out what’s going on.

Uh, oh. Venus sends Psyche’s two sisters to plant seeds of doubt in her mind. (These are the two girls with fidgety movements dressed in violent blue and acid green topped with fright wigs). Psyche, like Belle, hasn’t talked to a real person in ages and proves vulnerable to her sisters’ insinuations.

On their advice, Psyche prepares a lamp and a knife – should her bedmate indeed turn out to be a winged serpent with fangs– and waits for dark. Upon discovering Cupid’s shattering beauty, her hands begin to shake and a drop of hot oil lands on his shoulder.

A moment later he vanishes, having whispered that “where there is no trust, love cannot exist.” Psyche, in despair, begins wandering through hill and dale. It takes her a while to figure out that Cupid has run home to mommy. The only solution is to kneel before her mother-in-law and humbly beg forgiveness.

Not so easy. Claiming that Cupid hovers between life and death from, like, something that can be solved with a Band-Aid, Venus devises all kinds of impossible tasks Psyche must first perform as penance (hopefully failing or, better yet, dying in the process).

But all kinds of kindly creatures decide to help or at least do no harm (insects, sheep, dogs, eagles, plants). Since the premiere almost three years ago, the costumes have been toned down. The girl Flowers still look like flowers. But the Animals and Insects no longer wear the obvious, only the boys’ spastic gestures are left to clue you in as to what species (I kind of miss the loony giraffe costume).

As she does when depressed, Psyche falls asleep again. (Sent to hell by Venus in order to ask to borrow Persephone’s beauty secrets Psyche, figuring that she must be looking pretty worn-out by now, can’t resist peeking into the box which contains…sleep).

Finally cured, Cupid is ready to forgive Psyche but…only once Jupiter agrees to grant her immortality and Hermes carries the girl up to Mount Olympus (we see neither) will Venus relent (air kiss).

Thus love (Cupid/Eros) is eternally united with the soul (what the word “psyche” literally means). By the way, Psyche’s emblem in art is the butterfly, which seems to be missing from the decor.

An opera by Christoph Willibald Glück (1762)
Staged and choreographed by Pina Bausch (1975)
Sung in German, danced by the Paris Opera Ballet

Orpheus – a musician so gifted that the sound of his lyre and arc of his voice can make rivers change course, wild animals lie down to be petted, and rocks cry — dares to journey to the underworld in search of his beloved wife, Eurydice. This, one of the greatest love stories of ancient Roman mythology, provided the plot for not only the very first opera created in 1607 – Monteverdi’s Orfeo — but has inspired more than one hundred other operas or ballets.

Pina Bausch’s modern and expressive take on Glück’s richly emotional score solves the conundrum of how to return ballet to its rightful place in an operatic evening. Bausch took dance too seriously to provide mere divertissements. Here she blesses each singer with a danced double, as in Glück’s original version: bodies and voices interact and complete each other. This intricate coupling of song and movement creates a symbiosis that you could say resembles a great marriage. One that has, already, lasted much longer than the brief and tragic one of Orpheus and Eurydice…

PART ONE: (1 hour 20 minutes)

FIRST TABLEAU: Mourning
Her snowy wedding veil now a shroud, Eurydice had died from a serpent’s bite on her wedding day. In her motionless arms: red roses symbolizing her husband Orpheus’s passionate love. Orpheus, devastated by grief at the loss of his turtle-dove, refuses to be consoled by the nymphs and shepherds who mourn with him.

But Orpheus is the greatest singer on earth. Despite daring to speak of the cruelty of the gods, his cries of despair sound so beautiful that they soften the hearts of these very same gods. Love arrives with a message: Orpheus will be allowed into Hades. If his music can disarm the guardians of the gates of Eternity, then he might be able to do what no living being had ever done: bring his wife back from the realm of the dead.

But there is one condition. Should he succeed in wrenching his wife from the arms of death, Orpheus must not look at her – nor explain why — before they have returned to this earth. Orpheus is suddenly worried for he has never lied, or been less than utterly honest, to Eurydice before.

SECOND TABLEAU: Violence
Orpheus enters a horrible dark and smoky cave by the river Styx, where the waters of woe pour into those of lamentation… and soon dissolve into the stream of oblivion. His wife just beyond reach, Orpheus must confront the three-headed guardian of the Underworld, the hound Cerberus (three male dancers in leather butcher’s aprons) and a swarm of Furies. You may be surprised that these screeching female avengers destined to torment sinners move about more like merely nervous and tired souls yearning for rest. That is because in Ovid’s vivid description, Orpheus proves the only mortal to make the implacable Furies not only relent, but weep. So if at first sight the Furies scream “no!” they do finally allow Orpheus to pass, swayed by how his beautiful music embodies the power of such loving devotion.

THIRD TABLEAU: Peace
Orpheus and Eurydice are reunited in the Elysian Fields, that exquisite and peaceful meadow in paradise where “blessed spirits” enjoy an eternity free from those violent human emotions that make us suffer so in mortal life. (The French term for this place is Les Champs-Elysées). Having already taken a drink from the river of forgetfulness and feeling rather blissed out, Eurydice is startled by how Orpheus seems both panicked and utterly cold at the same time. Did he come all this way only to turn away from her? Why, then, should she abandon this new « life? »

INTERMISSION (20 minutes)

PART TWO: (30 minutes)

FINAL TABLEAU: Death
As she is being led back to earth Eurydice, unable to understand why Orpheus stubbornly refuses look at her, can only imagine that it must be because he no longer loves her. In that case, she would rather be dead. Her despair grows, and Orpheus struggles to maintain his self-control.

This situation always makes me think of a very long car ride, where you are stuck in the back and wind up wanting to strangle the driver, there, in the front, with his back to you, who has been feeding you monosyllables for hours. Even if that means wrecking the car in the middle of Idaho. And I’m not the only one who feels this way. Now is the time for you to re-view Jean Cocteau’s dark-hearted film.

Alas, unable to stand it any longer, Orpheus suddenly turns to face Eurydice, to reassure and embrace her. At that very instant she falls dead, this time forever. Orpheus loses the will to live, even to move. In a poignant and emotionally raw final tableau, he allows death to take him too.

NOTE:

The opera’s libretto provides a happy end, where human frailty is forgiven and love conquers all. Bausch decided to cut Glück’s last two scenes. Her somber finale, with music from the lament we heard at the outset, is probably more suited to our pessimistic times, and rhymes well with the choreographer’s feral sensitivity to the complexity of life and love. Her company in Wupperthal was/lives on as a coven of strong women who make big statements, most often in clad in those dresses that swish and swoop and make you move differently from normal – one way to signify the female in all her power. Her men embrace extremes: clad in suits, or leather, or almost nothing at all. They are either grindingly dominant or utterly fragile. Bausch understood how, while we like to dream of love, too often we suffer from the urge to tear each other (and ourselves) apart. The Paris Opera Ballet is the only company outside Bausch’s own to have been deemed capable of doing justice to not just one but two of her masterpieces — the other being her pungent and loamy Rite of Spring, which will hopefully soon return to the repertoire.

A minor episode from the second volume of Miguel Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote de la Mancha – “Gamache’s Wedding” – is spun out into a comic evening-length ballet. While the mime playing the Don keeps crossing the stage in his single-minded pursuit of courtly love, the real heroes are two thwarted but resourceful young lovers. This is a ballet of many colors: exuberant stylized folk dances (Spanish and gypsy) contrast with the classical purity of the poetic “dream scene;” and slapstick gives way to an explosion of spectacular pyrotechnic dancing in the final “wedding scene.”

As Cleopold points out, even the choreographer of record re-tooled his original within two years and then again…and this ballet has been added onto and fussed over by each generation and every company ever since. For Paris, Rudolf Nureyev scanned and chewed over every version he could find in search of, for lack of a better word, the truth. He sought to create a dramatically-correct structure that would allow the dancers to feel less silly. By instilling some kind of additional logic into the plot and action (details, really) and adding yet more dance, he reshaped this ballet chestnut into an even more satisfying soufflé.

PROLOGUE: IN DON QUIXOTE’S ROOMS

The mimed prologue brings us into the world of Don Quixote, an impoverished gentleman obsessed with the days of chivalry. We see the exasperation of his starving entourage: his servants and the rotund monk Sancho Panza. While this fat man of God tries to hold onto the chicken he has just stolen, the Don prepares to go out and right the world’s wrongs.

ACT I: A SQUARE IN BARCELONA

The high-spirited and strong-willed Kitri, the innkeeper’s daughter, leaps into view. She is soon joined by the man she loves: the dashing Basilio, a barber. Her father, Lorenzo, interrupts them. He refuses to let his gorgeous daughter marry such an impecunious suitor. Lorenzo has a much better catch in mind: the idiotic Gamache, a foppish aristocrat.

The sexy Street Dancer, joined by the toreador Espada and his matadors — and then by Kitri’s two girlfriends — all entertain the crowd with dances until the Don arrives astride his mangy horse. The earthy antics of Sancho Panza (which consist mostly of looking up under the womenfolk’s skirts) distract the crowd. When Don Quixote espies Kitri, he mistakes her for the sweet and inexistant “Dulcinea,” his imaginary ladylove. Kitri humors the elderly knight and joins him in an old-fashioned minuet.

When Sancho Panza’s unsuccessful attempt to steal a fish creates a disturbance, Kitri and Basilio run away together.

ACT II

SCENE 1: A GYPSY CAMP IN THE SHADOW OF A WINDMILL

Finally all alone in the middle of nowhere, Kitri and Basilio come to realize just how serious their flirtatious love affair has become. When set upon by gypsies, the couple appeals for help. Kitri’s gold earrings play a cameo role. By the time Lorenzo, Gamache, the Don, etc., catch up with them, the young lovers have become unrecognizable in borrowed gypsy garb. Kitri is particularly brazen, jiggling her shoulders and rattling her new fake jewelry right under the noses of her pursuers. The guests are next treated to a puppet show, which tells the story of…young lovers on the run. The Don, always one more step away from the real world, first tries to rescue the puppets but then espies a giant monster: the famous windmill. Challenging it to a joust, the Don rushes to the attack. Even the orchestra goes oooh! The windmill wins.

ACT II

SCENE 2: A FOREST GLADE (THE DON’S DREAM)

We now share the vision that appears to a terribly wounded Don Quixote. He hallucinates that Dulcinea/Kitri leads him to a magic land: the kingdom of the dryads (mythical wood nymphs). Here Kitri, Cupid, the Queen of the Dryads, and a bevy of identically dressed ballerinas all dance only for him. The knight’s idea of heaven turns out to be a pure and abstract classical ballet: a realm of soft colors and music, beautiful tutus, complex geometric patterns, gentle and harmonious movements, which provide the setting for extremely technically difficult solos for each ballerina.

ACT III

SCENE 1: A TAVERN

The bullfighter Espada and his friends are rejoined by Kitri and Basilio, still in their exotic disguise. Lorenzo, et al., also catch up with them. Kitri’s father is adamant that his daughter must marry Gamache – the stupid suitor from act 1 — but Basilio has one more trick up his sleeve. “Distraught,” Basilio “stabs” himself and lies “dying” center stage. Kitri begs the Don (miraculously recovered from the windmill’s conk on his head) to help the course of true love. Her father finds himself forced at swordpoint to bless their union. This, of course. means that Basilio may miraculously recover from his wound. The Don and Gamache decide to finally have it out. (When the guys are “on,” this bit can turn into the Minister of Silly Walks meets Mr. Bean).

ACT III

SCENE 2: THE WEDDING PARTY

No extensive miming of wedding vows here, merely a joyful party where Kitri and Basilio express their relief, like any newlyweds, at finally being united.

We get to see these two burst into a brilliant grand pas de deux, a rite of ballet which follows a template as codified as any ceremony. A bouncy entrance for both. A sudden burst of private emotions brings them together to dance in slow harmony. Then the hero will jump for joy. Then the heroine will begin to trill [When she whips out her fan, start – discreetly – to rub your head and pat your stomach along to the music, to demonstrate just how much you are in sync to this subtle demonstration of technical mastery]. Then they will both try to outdo each other in the final coda but finish having decided that fabulous partnering is in fact the secret to a great marriage.

All on stage join together to celebrate. The guest of honor, Don Quixote, decides to take his leave and sets out in quest of new adventures. I bet that, after today’s events, he will only find boredom.